Voluntary, Workcamp, Solidarity

Voluntary, used to refer to a person who willingly enlist for, in early days, military service. Talk about defending your beloved country or marching into foreign soils to “free” some others. At the time, volunteers are driven by fear, uncertainties and chaos. Volunteers will only be voluntary, if you choose to do it first, or forced to do so, later. Someone is walking through your door and you can’t just sit there doing nothing. It’s a battle you ought to fight; it’s a war you have to win.

Many years after the First World War, however, things didn’t change much. There are still voluntary movements, plenty of “battles” left to be fought. Volunteers are driven by passions, desire and hope to win battle of understanding, sustainable lifestyle, global friendship and solidarity. Most volunteer who are on constant move, either during their gap-year, summer break, long working vacation or any other reason at all, are of the open minded down to earth kind. They believe in exploring by volunteering, thus creating a platform for everyone to learn and communicate among each other. These are the people who go to the ground zero, getting their hand dirty asking for nothing but a glass of clean water to drink, ideas to share, problem to solve, even at the lowest scale and level possible. People who spend years to equip themselves and make things happen there and then.

One of the most direct forms of voluntary actions must be workcamp. From the first ever Verdun village reconstruction workcamp in early 20’s, today we must have thousands similar or if not, diversified workcamp going on annually. Ideally workcamp is a rich mix of few main components like people and obvious cause, thriving at different level from smallest village to biggest city of millions. People came from different background, social status, education level, age, gender, religion, race, color of their skin and eyes to work, sleep and live together for a period of time, in peace. Sounds easy, but we are not talking about “closing your ears” kind of adaptation. This is when you have to eat rice everyday, take only bread and butter for lunch and had cold dishes for dinner. You work in extreme humid weather, communicate in foreign languages and freezes your hand to prepare you first ever dinner for yourself, and everyone else. For me weeks long experience will be just fantastic, but months long project is definitely a challenge. It is not about your willingness to understand and blend, it’s also about some other unforeseen circumstance which may occurs in people’s day to day interaction. The key is, honesty will most like help you survived.

Unless you, well, falls into a workcamp trap?

But like everything else, the downside of workcamp are sometimes, just too embarrass to mention. First of all, it ought to be SIMPLE. You need to know who are you, what are you doing and where are you going. If personal identity is uncertain, you probably need help, not offering. People with not definite self-respect will change with the moody weather, swing few directions at a time. Like my cold-blooded old car, its air-condition turned “warm” during hot day but freezing when driven during cold rainy night. You always have price within you, that everything else has a price, too. Start believing yourself like your belief in God, if you have any.

Moving forward, what you are doing and where you will end up with, are usually closely related. Everything can look good on papers, that ideologies are not served as long as it is not tested. There must be hundreds of way to organize a workcamp, voluntary project. For many voluntary project is just an experience, something that will enrich your personal life and quality of your curriculum vitae having met plenty of “cool” friends and unlimited interesting story to tell. But for some, it is a once in the life time opportunity, a dew point where they reshape again and found motivation to move one step further. I am referring mainly to local community, or some volunteers who are more like “asylum seekers”, but running from no harm of course. Improving (volunteers) and changing (host), are not always similar, or always beneficial. To be responsible for dozens of volunteer is sometime hectic, but to be responsible for a community is just overwhelming.

Priorities are always given to hosting community or organization of any forms, as we are doing our best to help them helping themselves, bringing hope and reels instead of despair-self and fishes. The problem comes as early as when you are selecting a suitable project (location) to start with. If everything boils down to marketing strategies then it’s easy, chose what is on major newspaper, simplest form of help required (just money) and closest to where help is easily available, with highest level of social awareness possible. Even all NGO or NPO ultimately needs money to stay alive and keep operating, we don’t start with single obvious goal to make big money. We might start looking at the most unlikely and difficult place, often where help are much needed compare to above mentioned “strategic” locations. Good news is project started by volunteers are always supported and kept alive by volunteers, that is has become a self-sustainable movement.

You just have to do it to believe it.

Note: This is totally unedited thoughts. I might come back and change a thing or two, so pardon my, huh, language, for one :)